Good News Week for TimeBank!

TimeBank has received two substantial funding grants in one week.

The Maudsley Charity has made a grant of £106,472 for TimeBank to work with King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry on an innovative 18-month project, mentoring young women who are leaving care. The project will assess the effectiveness of mentoring as a preventive intervention for depression and anxiety, teenage pregnancy and unemployment in this vulnerable population.

Professor Tom Craig from King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, says: “Young people leaving care are at much greater risk of adverse social and mental health outcomes in later life, in part because they lack the support and security of a stable family and peer network. This project is important because it is an attempt to compensate for this and so provide a genuinely preventive intervention based on an approach that could be widely disseminated at very modest cost."

In the same week City Bridge Trust has made a grant of £80,000 to enable TimeBank to extend its Leaders Together project, which helps build the capacity of small charities and community organisations in London. The project recruits volunteers who are senior professionals in their fields to act as mentors to organisations which may be struggling to survive in the current economic climate.

The new grants follow an award of £256,273 last year from the Big Lottery Fund to support carers.

Helen Walker, Chief Executive of TimeBank, says: “This really is fantastic news and underlines TimeBank’s well-earned reputation for its volunteer mentoring projects, which tackle some of the most serious issues in our society – from ex-servicemen recovering from mental health issues to carers who are struggling to cope."